July 26, 2012

The decline of Western civilization Friday open thread (the real one)

by liberal japonicus

True to form, the real open thread material was waiting until I made some ill advised attemp at a post, whereupon it leaps out. Fortunately, my surgery isn't until this afternoon, so, from Nation, here it is

in an effort to more deeply understand Pompeii, researchers have delved not only into the city’s architecture and frescoes, but also all the graffiti to be found throughout its ancient walls. But before you go assuming the ancient Pompeiians vandalized with only the most brilliant bons mots—“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” everywhere, perhaps—I suggest reading exactly what the excavators have dug up.

Not particularly NFSW, and the page with all the grafitti is here. I love this next one, which seems a bit more vivid in the context of Pompeii

VIII.2 (in the basilica); 1880: The man I am having dinner with is a barbarian.

Comments

I wonder why the political graffiti are missing on that list. The slogans were often as inane as they are today* and they knew a lot of 'modern' trikcs already including reverse psychology.
But a lot of the graffiti on the list could be from just yesterday too.

Regarding the tricks, Hartmut, Aristotle would have written (spoken) Rhetoric 250 years before Vesuvius buried the city, plenty of time for those grafittists to get caught up on the latest persuasive trend.

But Aristotle and his ilk were into spoken propaganda. Tricking simpletons with short written slogans seems to have been a Roman invention (they had still enough time to learn that before the ash came down).